True Blood-Bath: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Vampire Show

I hate the entire vampire genre. And I mean I really hate anything vampire-related: Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Count von Count from Sesame Street, Count Chocula (and Boo Berry, just by association)—no thanks. This could have been problematic given that I’d been assigned to write weekly recaps of the new season of HBO’s True Blood. My previous job as VF.com’s Lost chronicler ended abruptly late last month—I’m told that it had more to do with the end of the show than personal performance—and, since then, I’ve been on the hunt for a new show to cover. There were two main criteria: The show had to be smart (so that I don’t have to be) and it had to have a strong following. This is not always an easy combination to find.

When my editors asked me to come up with a new show—my original suggestion of Remington Steele was shot down because the unspoken third criterion was that the show had to have aired more recently than 1987—imagine my horror when, in a panicked involuntary utterance, I blurted out “True Blood … we should cover True Blood?”

You see, I have never actually watched True Blood before. And the last time I went on a marathon catch-up session wasn’t exactly the happiest time of my life. Additionally, I believe I might have already mentioned that I don’t like vampires—yes, this includes Count Floyd and the ‘80s Saturday morning cartoon Drak Pack.

Thankfully, having two weeks to watch 24 episodes felt like an absolute eternity compared with the three weeks I had to get through five seasons of Lost. Perhaps this relative sense of relief explains why I actually enjoyed the first two seasons of True Blood.

For one thing, even though the show is nominally about vampires, it’s not really about vampires. The opening credits depicting a billboard that reads “God hates fangs” gives a pretty clear clue as to the show’s allegorical nature. Also, unlike Lost, this isn’t a show that takes itself too seriously. There’s a tongue-in-cheek playfulness about the show, which I was not at all expecting.

Before we get to last night’s Season-Three premiere, here’s a super quick recap from the first two seasons that I’m attempting from memory.

Sookie Stackhouse, who lives in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, can read minds. (Yes, this is already starting to sound convoluted. Bear with me.) She falls in love with a vampire named Bill Compton primarily because he’s one of the only people whose minds she can’t read. Vampires live in the open because of a mass-market drink called Tru Blood that allows them to feed without needing to attack humans for their hemoglobin. Sookie works at a bar for a nice enough guy named Sam—who can turn into a dog when he feels like it—with her sassy best friend, Tara, and Tara’s cousin, Lafayette, a gay prostitute and “V” dealer. (“V” is vampire blood, which, to humans, has supernatural healing powers and is also a powerful aphrodisiac and hallucinogen.) Sookie also has a brother, Jason, who may be the least intelligent character to ever appear on a television show. She also had a grandmother who was murdered by a serial killer.

Over the course of the second season, a woman named Maryann, who is something called a Maenad, turns the entire town—except for pretty much Sookie, Sam, and the vampires—into orgy-loving cannibal zombies. Bill and his vampire boss, Eric, fight a church that is out to destroy vampires and then fight each other over the love of Sookie. Later, Sam defeats Maryann by turning into a bull.

One of the best aspects of True Blood is that it doesn’t fuck around getting to the point. (There’s your blurb, HBO). Every episode picks up right were the last one left off, even between seasons. In the last episode of Season Two, Bill proposed to Sookie—hey, Vampires and humans can legally marry in Vermont!—but was interrupted by kidnappers, who, as we learned Sunday night, turned out to be werewolves. Naturally.

Eric (who seems to have found time for a haircut since last season) continues to be the show’s most interesting character, just ahead of Lafayette. And this has nothing to do with the fact that Alexander Skarsgård, who plays Eric, is one of the most beautiful creatures to ever walk the face of the Earth. Eric can be sympathetic one minute and infuriating the next. In Season Two, Eric saved Sookie’s life from a terrorist bomber, then immediately tricked her into drinking his blood, which creates a bond (and some really inappropriate dreams). He agrees to search for the missing Bill (hooray!); he wears a Bluetooth headset (Boo!); and he sells “V,” a big no-no under vampire law. (I can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence.)

Ah, yes, those vampire-blood dreams. In the Season-Two finale Sam is almost killed before he turns into a bull to destroy Maryann. He was saved only by the healing powers of Bill’s blood. Sam is currently in Arkansas searching for his birth parents, which set up last night’s pretty unrealistic erotic encounter in Sam’s dream about Bill, a seemingly innocent conversation that leads to a torrid hookup. I feel the dialogue is very much worth repeating here.

A shirtless Bill enters Sam’s hotel room. “If you could spare a shirt, he says, "I’d be much obliged.”

Sam replies, “You can have the shirt off my back, if you want.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Bill replies, as Sam removes his shirt. “Nice. I’m going to take that shower now … if you should care to join me. I hear the water in Arkansas is … very hard.”

If show creator Alan Ball ever finds himself on hard times, he’ll always have a future as a porn writer.

Sookie’s sex-obsessed brother, Jason, can’t perform because he feels guilty for killing Eggs (yes, that’s a name) Talley—who, to be fair, did look like he was about to stab local detective Andy, who covers for Jason. Tara, who loved Eggs, is sad about his death. Meanwhile Jessica, a kind of vampire in training that Bill is responsible for (long story), has to deal with the stench of the putrefying trucker she accidently killed and is hiding in her house. If I had a dime for every smelly dead trucker…

And we are left with a scene in which Bill prepares to square off against a pack of werewolves; Mississippi werewolves, no less. (Apparently they’re the wolfiest.) That shower with Sam is probably sounding pretty good to Bill at this point.

Full disclosure: I have a screener that contains the first three episodes. What was fun about Lost was trying to predict what was coming next (I was never right). It was tempting to make incredibly bold predictions about the next two episodes then declare myself a television genius once they happened. Yes, that would be cheating, but just one time, I would like to be on record as having guessed something right. Then again, miracles do happen. I mean, I just wrote 1,300 words about a vampire show! I was even told that, after a few cocktails at a wedding last weekend, I wouldn’t stop repeating, in my best Bill Compton voice, “Sue-kay!” And I have no doubt the other wedding guests were quite impressed and are all looking forward to spending time with me again. Like vampirism itself, True Blood is infectious. It’s also incredibly fast paced, it has a socially responsible message and, most importantly, it taught me I shouldn’t judge a show before I’ve watched it. (Glee doesn’t count. You will never get me to watch Glee.)